At 99% it was just an error from someone at Apple, that did little to no damage to anyone, and tomorrow we'll see official apologies.
But it quickly generated the usual flood of "Apple racism" from people who has nothing better to do.

I wonder how much energy has been wasted for this and how much carbon was released in the atmosphere

At 99% it was just an error from someone at Apple, that did little to no damage to anyone, and tomorrow we'll see official apologies.
But it quickly generated the usual flood of "Apple racism" from people who has nothing better to do.

I wonder how much energy has been wasted for this and how much carbon was released in the atmosphere

The question then becomes - are there any drawbacks to having this software installed?

Because this "mistake" means that probably 70-90% (yes, made that up) of all Apple software users are probably now running this "update" because they've been "trained" to just click install every time an updater pops up.

Will Apple go back and remove this software from every machine that it was installed on "by mistake"? If not, does this software do anything to affect the user? My initial black-helicopter thought was: "Does it by chance report any details back to Apple when an iPhone is connected?" It sure sounds it pulls a lot of info off the phone...

Will Apple go back and remove this software from every machine that it was installed on "by mistake"? If not, does this software do anything to affect the user? My initial black-helicopter thought was: "Does it by chance report any details back to Apple when an iPhone is connected?" It sure sounds it pulls a lot of info off the phone...

It's quite possible you're right

But if Apple really wants to gather details of the iPhones in the wild, they surely have more subtle ways...